Product Description

Ticket to Ride: Marklin Edition by Days of Wonder is the third installment in Days of Wonder's best-selling Ticket to Ride Series. The board for the Märklin Edition is based on a map of Germany and each individual card in the deck depicts a different Märklin Trains model. A DVD introducing players to the Märklin line of model trains is included. Passenger figures are used to pick up merchandise tokens worth different numbers of points along the routes that they claim. The player who completes the most destination tickets receives a 10 point bonus (instead of the base game's longest route bonus).

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #2411 in Toys & Games
• Brand: Days of Wonder
• Model: 4099397
• Dimensions: 12.00" h x 3.00" w x 12.00" l, 3.00 pounds

Features

• Third installment in the popular Ticket to Ride series of games
• Simple, fun, and addictive
• Stand-alone game
• Cards feature historical train photographs from the Marklin archives
• Great family game

From the Manufacturer
The Märklin Edition of Ticket to Ride is the third installment in the bestselling boardgame series that has won 14 international game awards, including the prestigious Spiel des Jahres. Like its predecessors, Ticket to Ride - Märklin Edition is simple, fun and addictive. Players collect sets of train cards that enable them to claim railway routes and fulfill their all-important Destination Tickets by connecting distant cities across a map of Germany. The Märklin Edition also introduces a new Ticket to Ride game play element - passengers that are used to pick up valuable merchandise along the routes. Created in partnership with Märklin, the world leader in model railroading, this edition features – 118 historical train photographs, each carefully selected from the incomparable Märklin archives. Ticket to Ride - Marklin is a complete, stand-alone game and does not require the original version. Contents include 1 Board map of Germany with train routes, 240 Colored Train Cars, 15 Passengers, 118 Train Car cards, 46 Destination Tickets, 1 Summary Card, 5 Scoring Markers, 74 Merchandise Tokens, 1 Rules booklet, and 1 Days of Wonder Online access number. It is for 2-5 players, and it takes 30-60 minutes to play.

Customer Reviews

Focus on the Passengers
The Bavaria/Marklin edition of Ticket to Ride stands alone from the basic (United States) and Europe editions of the game, both in the narrow sense that it is not an "expansion set" to those games, but also in the broader sense that it's a lot more than just the old game with a different map. The rules are fairly similar, so learning all three games only takes a modest amount of time, but the differences across the games alter the strategies a fair bit. Each one feels like a distinct experience.

For those unfamiliar with the series, here's what they all have in common: There is a game board indicating routes among a bunch of cities. The object of the game is to amass the most points, and in one way or another those points come from collecting the routes strategically. Collecting any route between two places will generate points, but each player holds Ticket Cards indicating longer routes of special importance to that person, and stringing together little routes to make this longer connection adds to the payoff (whereas failing to do so imposes a penalty). How do the players take possession of routes? They take turns drawing cards that, when collected into sets, determine which routes they can use, and eventually they start using those cards to claim routes. The main random element is the timing of when those cards turn up in the deck.

The Bavaria/Marklin edition contains a few differences from the other two, but the main new feature is the introduction of Passengers. Each player gets three little plastic guys who can be sent for a ride along the railway, collecting points at each town/city visited. The longer a player's rail, other things equal, the more points the little fellow can collect. But the value of visiting a town/city drops each time, so there's a nice tension between wanting to send them early (while the places are more valuable) and send them late (when more places have been connected). The addition of this rule (and the large number of points associated with it) really alters the strategy from the other two editions.

I don't know that I've done the games justice. They're truly outstanding. You don't have to care a whit about trains. Even small children can enjoy these games, as long as they focus on the pleasure of successfully connecting things instead of focusing on beating the older players. (A suggestion: Keep a pad of paper in the box and track the child's points so that the competition is personal rather than with the adults.) The pace is especially fast, as each player takes turns drawing cards or claiming routes. (My family likes to play a board game while we eat but this one moves so quickly that we have a hard time doing both at the same time.) The boards are gorgeous, the pieces colorful and sturdy. We have just been thrilled with these purchases.

I guess I'll end with a single criticism, only because it's related to the hazy word choice I had to use here. For whatever reason -- I won't speculate why -- the designers pitched these games as representing some kind of competition among travelers to visit places. It feels totally artificial. (Why exactly is a railway route unavailable once someone else has traveled it?) I've used neutral language, saying that players "collect" or "take possession" of routes, which they do in the game's backstory by riding the line. But we found it much more comfortable to interpret the game in a robber baron context, with players either building or buying railway lines -- and by the second time we played we were already referring to the claiming of a route as "laying rail." The game plays the same with either interpretation.

Our Favorite Game--By a Lot
A couple of years ago, my family was introduced by some friends to the USA version of Ticket to Ride. We play a lot of different board games (A LOT) and thought it was pretty fun. I decided to purchase it for my dad for Christmas. What happened next is still slightly a mystery. Logically, I guess I probably messed up and ordered the Marklin/Germany version rather than the USA version, though I still can't believe I made that mistake. However it happened, we ended up with this version showing up in the mail, and we couldn't be happier. The USA version was fun, but the Marklin version is much, much superior. My family plays board games all of the time, and whenever I'm home vising my parents, it's no exaggeration to say that we play this game every night. It's captured all of our imaginations and has provided us with years of fun.

Ticket to Ride: Marklin is similar to the USA version in many ways. The winner is the person who at the end accumulates the most points. Each player draws and chooses several routes at the beginning of the game and then tries to draw cards with the colors corresponding to the tracks that will take you through the towns you need to visit. Of course, there's a limited number of routes between cities, and if other players take your route, you may have to find creative ways to get where you're needing to go. Each track you lay is worth points, and connecting the routes are worth points, too. Each turn consists of either laying a track, drawing cards, choosing new routes, or traveling with a passenger.

It's that last feature--the passengers--that the Marklin version of the game has added, and it makes all the difference in the world. In addition to accumulating points by laying the tracks and connecting cities, each city also has three numbered tiles (for a lack of a better word) on it. For three turns of the game, you may send one of your three passengers down one of the routes you've completed (you can't travel between the same two end-points twice), picking up points from each city on the path.

This changes the game drastically because it means that there are many ways to win (long routes typically win the other versions of the game). You may win with longer routes that accumulate a lot of points, or you may with with shorter routes that have more passenger points along the way. You must plan when you're going to send your traveler, as the other players may beat you to those points. You may also win by completing more routes. You may win by a combination of those strategies.

The effect is that this is a new game every time, and you constantly are having to adapt your strategy to the contingencies on the board. There is a heavy level of strategy, but it's not all strategy. You can be frustrated by bad luck or just by good play by other players. It's also quick moving. Each game takes around forty minutes to an hour, and you are pretty well consumed the entire time. Lastly, that may all sound difficult, but it's not so difficult to catch onto. We've taught a lot of people to play it over the years, and they've enjoyed it and picked it up quickly.

So, I give this my highest recommendation for board games. It's challenging, exciting, and fun, and it's a new game every time you play it. I've played a lot of board games over the years, and I would never hesitate to claim that this one is my favorite.

Ticket to Ride
This one has more twists as to how you can get from place to place. Seemed a little harder than the original, but still loads of fun! Our favorite thing to do is play Ticket to Ride in the evenings!!